Snow in May: Stories by Kseniya Melnik

Author:Kseniya Melnik [Melnik, Kseniya]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781627790086
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2014-05-13T00:00:00+00:00

Summer Medicine

1993

All my life I’ve been healthy, too healthy to ever go to a real hospital, naturally. But this summer break, I had finally hit on a perfect plan and I carried it out masterfully. First, while undergoing my annual physical at Baba Olya’s Polyclinika in Syktyvkar, I told the gastroenterologist, Dr. Osip, that I had chronic epigastric pain. I had saved up raw mushrooms from a recent picking trip to the forest with Baba Olya and had been eating them every few days. I only had to throw up three times (with accompanying moans and shrieks) for Baba Olya to arrange an overnight diagnostic stay at the Big Hospital. She was in charge of me for the summer: I knew she’d take no chances with my health.

Compared to the two-storied wooden Polyclinika with lazy polyclinikanese cats warming themselves on the porch and lilac trees throwing sleepy shadows into the doctors’ offices, the Big Hospital seemed like a whole different city. It was gleaming white and as enormous as an ocean liner—with columns, marble steps, and two wings extending into the green waves of the park. Patients in faded pajamas shuffled along the flower-lined alleys, holding on to walking sticks or the elbows of their visitors. Ambulances buzzed by, their sirens wailing. Doctors hurried in and out of doors like white cranes. All the chambers of my heart were aflutter. Helping out at the Polyclinika no longer satisfied my thirst for a bloodcurdling, bone-protruding emergency, but here I was sure to finally observe real medicine.

As Baba Olya and I walked down the hallway, I looked out for my summer friend Alina, whom I still hadn’t seen this year. She had already been to the Big Hospital several times because of her migraines and didn’t like it. But it was different for her—she was just a patient, while I was going to be the chief doctor, like Baba Olya.

Instead of with Alina, Baba Olya set me up in a room with two older girls named Liza and Natasha. Liza was small like me, with a sparse ponytail and long blunt bangs. Natasha was a chubby redhead. Likely prediabetic, I noted. They sat on their beds and watched me unpack the purple Beauty and the Beast backpack Papa had sent me from Alaska. I’d also brought a pink American sweatshirt, a box of Mr. Sketch fruit-smelling markers, and two books: Robinson Crusoe in Russian and The Little Mermaid picture book in English, which I was studying back home at the English Lyceum.

“Your grandma’s so fat,” Natasha said when Baba Olya had left. “Where does she work? The cake factory?”

Liza nodded, the corner of her lip twisted up.

Oh, yes. It was a sad and medically troubling truth. Baba Olya was so overweight, she could no longer work as a dentist and now dedicated all her time to running the Polyclinika. That’s why, when the time had come for my annual dental exam two weeks ago, instead of going to her, I was escorted straight into the chair of the new dentist.

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